I Puritani, opera by Vincenzo Bellini at the Metropolitan Opera, starring Anna Netrebko.
In 1956, when Maria Callas made her Metropolitan Opera debut, Geraldine Farrar, a famous Prima Donna of old, wrote "At last we have a Prima Donna" and indeed, unlike the faux Prima Donnas of recent times, Netrebko is the real thing - beautiful, glamorous and gifted beyond measure. This lady is not only a world class beauty, but she's the finest lyrico-spinto soprano of our time with a lustrous voice that haunts the memory. She's an ideal Elvira and it's unlikely that this role has ever quite been acted so well on this stage or perhaps any other since the first Elvira Giulia Grisi performed the role in 1835. Netrebko moves with the grace of a ballerina and takes a stock character and makes it flesh and blood. The rest of the cast is merely adequate, with John Releya as Giorgio in a role originally created by Luigi Lablache perhaps a bit more than that. The production, which first starred Joan Sutherland (a singer who was a world apart from Netrebko in every way) still looks beautiful. This is perhaps Anna Netrebko's finest Metropolitan Opera performance to date, don't miss it! "I Puritani" is a gorgeous work, and is perhaps Bellini's finest score, but in the Met's current production, only Netrebko is fully up to the demands of this formidable Bel Canto masterwork. Nonetheless, for the incomparable Netrebko alone, we give "I Puritani" at the Metropolitan Opera an A+ in our Bridge and Tunnel Test.